


Daybreak

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pining, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a fic to celebrate the dean/cas anniversary: so, obviously, it's full of pining and loss. ♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daybreak

He sits bolt-upright in bed, but it’s not because of a dream.

The bunker, so quiet with Sam in the hospital, with no one else to wander around it, is cold. He slides out of bed, peeling the covers back carefully; his feet hit the floor.

He doesn’t know what woke him; weird noise, maybe, or just worry about Sam; the worry is there, sure, but he doesn’t think that’s it. It’s 5am.

He wanders around his room a little, but that brings him no closer to a realisation. Considers going back to bed, but his body – tugged away from sleep by something so _definite –_ doesn’t seem to want to go back.

He goes outside, instead, with a cup of coffee, and decides to watch the dawn.

Outside the bunker, up on top of the hill that forms its roof, Dean sits in his pyjamas, half-frozen in the early autumn sunshine. It’s bright up here, brighter than he expected, at least, and the fields ahead of him are slowly being laced with gold, shuddering in the breeze, as if they, too, are being roused from sleep.

It’s only when he looks at his phone that he even realises the date.

—-

Wandering down the highway in tattered jeans, Castiel contemplates the day he came to earth.

It’s a different place, now; when he came, the ground was littered with snow, but this same cusp of winter comes differently; is bright, blindingly so, and stings his heels as he walks.

He takes a gasp of air, but it is nothing like his first.

With his fingers dug in his shallow pockets, he keeps walking. Tugs his jacket tighter around himself, and wonders if he can even remember what it was; to breathe life into a body, to bring a forest down. To possess, in such measure, grace.

But the idea seems so far off, now, and things have so changed.

Oftentimes, walking like this, he finds himself thinking of Dean.

—-

Dean turns the cellphone over and over in his hands.

It was after they met Chuck, some fucking night, some fucking motel; Dean, rolling out of bed, sleepless, much like this. Finding, in the parking lot, an angel.

He hadn’t said anything; neither had Cas. Just sat with him, waiting for the night to pass, the heavier dawn to fill its place. He knew, even then, that there was something sad in Castiel, something desperate. Something that found the core of Dean and resonated.

But he hadn’t said anything then, nor since. Not in all the motels, not in all the moments they shared. After he died – the third time – Dean had prayed a lot of fucking stupid, wilful words; but never said them to his face.

He remembers crawling out of the grave; before that, light.

He wonders where in the world that light is, now.

—-

There is no one on this road, this time of morning. Castiel walks, undisturbed; steeped, deeply, in thought.

Sometimes he wonders at how the earth has shaped him. Like sandstone that a wave has rasped itself against, he’s different; smaller. Wider, too.

The grass along the edge of the highway is wet, and soaks the bottoms of his jeans, leaks through his shoes. He shuffles through it anyway, too afraid to walk in the road, however calm the path might seem.

He fears now, wants now, hungers. In a way, he always had; knew the dull sting of loss, how emptiness could feel, when you went unfulfilled. But now he has images, fantasies; he pictures incredible, ridiculous things that he can never have.

One that warms him just before sleep is the idea of going  _home._

He wants to sleep, often; not on the roadside, snatched, as he has; but curled on a mattress, in someone’s arms, beside something warm. He hungers most definitely for comfort; feels slick and slippery, as if the push of a hand would skid him away. He knows that if –  _when –_ he returns to the Winchesters, little will greet him but animosity – but the fantasy persists, lovely and horrible.

In this dream, he gets home, and he is miraculously clean; he smiles, and Dean is there, his brother, too. They show him in, they hold him in their arms, they say  _we missed you,_ they say  _are you okay?_

And they feed him, they clothe him in their things. They welcome him home like a brother, and kiss his forehead, and tell him it will be alright; and it will be, of course, because they are together.

He dreams of Dean, sleep-warm, against his side; curling a hand in his, not quite purposeful touching, but not without purpose, either.

The human mind is unkind, but he lets himself dream, nonetheless. The sweetness outweighs the tragedy.

—-

 Dean watches the sun rise for the first time in years.

Five years ago this day, he crawled out of his own grave. Heard Castiel’s voice for the first time; found his way back to Sam, and to Bobby.

And in the months that followed,  _somehow,_ Castiel became the best friend he’d ever had.

He wonders sometimes if he could have – should have – touched him. Reached out a hand, and curled it around his. Dropped onto his shoulder one night, sleepy, and let himself lean on him.

Past the bunker the world is wide and unsullied, sun spreading thin over every inch.

He misses him, both of them; worries for Sam, but also for Castiel.

Human now, and alone, and lost; nothing like the thing that  _raised him_  on this day; but Dean aches for him, nonetheless. 


End file.
